Moving in...

After this point, our pictures are few and far between. I still have boxes in my dining, but a few less than pictured here.
My little sweeping buddy:

I found this guy in the closet, behind some Pax wardrobe units. After he had finished hammering in the backing, he climbed up from behind them and manage to wriggle his way over the top and down. WOW.

There is a time to install a wall bracket and a time to hang off of it:

The house is ready for our stuff

The new carpet's installed and the MB is painted.

The crab tree outside the window begins to flower.

Nathan seems to think his room might feel like a prison sometimes. :-)

One hot day in Calgary

We went exploring and found many people trying to cool off.
Nathan and Emily didn't stop to play in the water. They were taking their daddy to see Aslan.

Daddy was very glad to meet Aslan.
It turns out Aslan was feeling the heat, too!

Preparing the new digs - the paint job

No chairs for the children, however...
...Bob the builder never looked so good!

Nathan's newly painted bedroom. The floor looks about the same as it does now...lego carpet.

Aaaaah, pepto-bismol pink. Perfect!

Paul - reflective and edgy.

While living in limbo....

Nathan collected hail:

Emily indulged in a mani-pedi:

We explored Bowness Park. It has a funky looking pedestrian bridge, suspended from the main bridge.

The irony - smart, huh?:

Wonderful Mondays

I used to dread Mondays.

Now, I long for them. They bring a calmer pace and relaxed atmosphere. Like today.

The kids played lazily, we practiced some printing, we hung out on the balcony while the burgers cooked. We watched some people parading around in a rally that called on the provincial government to subsidize midwifes. We played Sorry and Scrabble Junior and made jello.

We meandered down to the C-train, deciding to get off that the TD square shopping centre and wandered down Stephen Ave mall to the City Hall and then wandered back, through a book store, nipped into a Tim's for a snack, and walked unhurriedly back to the C-train. We got off one stop later (4 blocks) and made our way home, through the park and around the corner to our building. We found Paul was home already, emptied the fridge of leftovers for dinner, enjoyed our jello and went to bed. Ok. Obviously I haven't yet. I will soon. I just don't want it to end. It's Monday - the nicest day of my week.

It's just so calm right now. And to think that we take possession of our home in one week. On a Monday. Will I be as relaxed as today? Heh heh heh...sadly, it's not very likely. But I thank God for His Peace, today.

Hopefully, I will stay in this place of peace and won't wander off to find myself in the land of Busyness and Stressing over Nothing. We sign papers with our lawyer tomorrow. I guess that'll be a test.

My condo is clean and i had nothing to do with it!

Yeah! Floors mopped, carpet vaccuumed, bathrooms are shiny and beds are made with fresh clean sheets. Aaaaah. Such a treat.
While housekeeping was doing their thing, we went to the Science Centre for a couple of hours and headed downtown for lunch. We were back by 3pm. I think we're getting the hang of this living in downtown and using public transit/walking everywhere thing. It will be sad to get back to the burbs in a just over a week.

It's 10 days away!!!!! I made the calls to set up our water, electricity and gas accounts today. I'm getting really excited.

Tonight, I had the opportunity to go out with a long-time friend from university. We dined at a wonderful Thai restaurant. Oh, so yummy!
We decided to head over to a local mall after we finished where she took me shoe shopping and found me some nice brown leather boots. Very lovely.
I think I'll start breaking them in tomorrow. And tomorrow I get the rare privilege of spending time with my husband sans kids. Thanks, Bea! My day will start with a massage and assuming I'll be able to walk without falling asleep, I'll hop in the car for 5 hours or so with Paul. Our plans? HDTV shopping.
I know.
We're waaaay too romantic.

It's gonna be a beautiful day...

We were walking to pick up the car (the windshield needed replacing) and spotted this beautiful sight around the corner from our place.We found the car and headed to downtown shopping area. After we had finished the errands I had in mind, I took the kids to the bookstore so they could pick out some books. They each had been given a gift card and were very excited to use it. The only issue was that they had some beautiful puppets in the store and the kids were pretty keen on them. I knew that I wanted them to simply pick books they wanted, the fun and frivolous, not necessarily educational treats just for them books. After they very carefully considered they each chose something I knew was an honest choice.
And then, I brought an owl and a rat home anyway. Reepicheep, the rat, isn't pictured here, he's a little camera-shy.
Nathan was developing a stye in one of his eyelids. I put some opthalmic ointment in and told him to close his eyes and listen to his CD for a few minutes while so the "medicine could work", aka I needed a bit of a Nathan break. 10 minutes later, when he hadn't bounded out of his room asking if he could get up yet, I check on him and discovered this:
Maybe he was the one who needed a break!

Beaver Dam Flats

One of the realities about Calgary that we find exciting is that in any given corner of the city you can find a wilderness jewel withing 5 or 10 minutes. We took a quick trip to Beaver Dam Flats, about 5 minutes away from Paul's office, just before we picked him up yesterday.In the background runs Deerfoot Trail, the only true highway in Calgary, which dissects the City. We were on the east side of it and Paul's office is located just west of it. We weren't sure but we thought we could see his office building from the top of this mini-escarpment.
The main reason we went though, was to check out the beaver lodges.
If we had more time, we would have walked down the hill and explored the paths. Since it is a Natural Area, we would stick to the paths, so the best view of the lodges is from this vantage point. I have to get more familiar with my camera to start getting better shots!

Once we left the Flats, we drove for a couple of minutes, picked up a rotisserie chicken dinner from Safeway, drove 5 minutes to Paul's office.

*sigh*

This is just what I need. A place where all the beautiful places aren't steamrollered by urban sprawl.

The new house. The latest visit.

We went to the new house today!! The kids ran upstairs right to "their" rooms. They were pretty excited. Paul thinks that's an understatement. He would call them ecstatic. Still a beautiful home to us. They were pretty happy with the back yard, even the part I consider "the wasteland", the bottommost level of the yard. Dark, shadowy, kinda creepy to me. I guess it will be a fun bug haven for Nathan. I'm going to have to collect small containers. The bug collection should be larger this year. We'll have to work on the pine cone collection with our blue spruce out front - after spring...Nathan got completely sticky hands after trying to snag a conical souvenir. He just brought home the spruce gum residue.

We've got our car! It was delivered today so after we check out the house, we headed to the airport to drop it off. While there we check out the "SpacePort". A lot of the activities were closed but there was enough to keep the kids entertained for a while.

We finally made it to the mountains on Saturday. We explored the Cave and Basin National Historic site. Emily and I spent quite a bit of time at the marsh, spying on birds. Most of our pictures ended up with overexposed mountaintops. We have much to learn about photographing snowcapped peaks. We had such a wonderful day. We'll go back again, because we bought a pass...to all the National Parks, because Jasper and Lake Louise are also on our explorational to-do list.

On Sunday, we headed to Fish Creek Provincial Park. It's about a 5 minute drive from our future home. We all seemed to just relax there. I think that each of us found it comforting and familiar. We spent so much time at GTA conservation areas that heading to a park where you walk through the holey homes of prairie dogs on the way from the playground to the washrooms was a very settling experience for us all.

What we've been doing

It been almost 2 weeks. The first week we were here, we spent a lot of time at home while Nathan recovered from his cold.
One of the first days here, Emily asked if she could listen to some music...
The second evening, Nathan got the Flames jersey he'd been asking for and put it on right away!:
The next evening, he decided to show off his exceptional skills at dressing himself for bed:
The happy play-doh-ers:
This week we got a handle on the LRT which runs through downtown. We went to the zoo, the downtown shopping mall, the indoor garden and the public library. We took some time today and explore a bit of the +15 walkway. We also noticed that the beautiful stone building across the street from our condo building is 101 years old. I also notice that the sidewalk marker at our corner is 1912. It's hard to see the history here, as it is masked by the modern elements so often.
Each day has been an adventure, even if we've spent it at home, like today. Nathan spent most of today playing with the plastic hockey stick and puck I bought for them yesterday. Emily spent most of today wrapping miscellaneous objects ( such as crayons) in scrap paper and giving them to Nathan to open as presents.
I am a little excited today because we got our cheque from the sale of our home. That means we have almost all of our downpayment ready. That makes me SMILE!
Tomorrow, we might go to the mountains... and Monday we will take the kids to see the house.

I'm looking forward to the day we get to go home.